A new investigation has revealed that the United States’ ethanol mandate is severely harming the environment without producing enough tangible benefits.

Since the Obama administration began implementing the ethanol
mandate – requiring a certain level of the biofuel to be added to
the gasoline supply – the Associated Press found that the damage
done by the program has dwarfed any suspected benefits, many of
which failed to materialize in the first place.

Since President Obama took office, roughly five million acres of
land set aside for conservation have been lost in the drive to
harvest more corn for ethanol, the investigation found. Farmers
have plowed into land previously unused for farming, releasing
amounts of carbon dioxide into the air that would take native
plants decades to reduce naturally.

Billons of pounds of fertilizer were also used on land, some of
which has leaked into drinking water, rivers, and has expanded
the Gulf of Mexico’s dead zone, which can no longer support life.

"This is an ecological disaster," said Craig Cox with the
Environmental Working Group to the AP. Cox’s group, once a White
House ally, now opposes the administration’s ethanol policies.

The effectiveness of ethanol as a reducer of carbon dioxide
emissions has also been greatly exaggerated, according to the
investigation, making it unknown whether or not ethanol could
ever be improved enough to help combat the effects of global
warming. On top of this, the price of corn has more than doubled
since 2010.

As a result, the ethanol industry has come under fire from a
surprising coalition of oil companies who oppose the mandate and
green groups who consider corn-based ethanol to be a net harm to
the environment.

The ethanol industry was quick to hit back at the AP
investigation, however. "There's probably more truth in this
week's National Enquirer than there is in
the AP story," said the Renewable Fuels Association's Geoff
Cooper on a press call, according to the National Journal.

The industry denies that the ethanol mandate is the root cause of
conservation land loss, and said the data showing more corn going
into fuel than food in 2010 is misleading.

For now, at least, the Obama administration is standing behind
the policy, partly to avoid a legislative battle with the
agriculture lobby, and partly because it believes that endorsing
corn-based ethanol will promote the development of biofuels that
are ultimately much cleaner and more efficient.

"That is what you give up if you don't recognize that
renewable fuels have some place here," Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA) administrator Gina McCarthy said to the
AP. "All renewable fuels are not corn ethanol."

Regardless, the tangible benefits of ethanol have become low
enough that the EPA is set to lower the amount of ethanol
required in the gas supply. Critics of the mandate are now
suggesting the government scrap it entirely, while the Washington
Post also published a story today, headlined “Time to kill the
corn ethanol mandate.”

Though the ethanol mandate was signed into law by President
George W. Bush before his second term ended, implementation fell
to the incoming Obama administration. The EPA was skeptical from
the outset, due to concern that planting and harvesting so much
corn would release enough carbon dioxide into the atmosphere to
make the benefits of ethanol uncertain at best.

"I don't remember anybody having great passion for this,"
Bob Sussman, who worked on Obama's transition team and recently
retired as EPA's senior policy counsel, said to the AP. "I
don't have a lot of personal enthusiasm for the program."

With support from the Department of Agriculture and some of
Obama’s senior advisers, however, the program went ahead. As a
result of inefficient regulations and poor predictions regarding
the biofuel’s viability as green energy, Obama officials have
realized that the ethanol mandate is inadequate policy. Obama
himself did not even refer to ethanol in his last major speech on
the environment, though whether any action is taken outside of
lowering the ethanol requirement for gas remains to be seen.